


Diamond Girl

by orphan_account



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Not K-Pop Idols, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-08 11:59:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14104905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “So,” Vernon says. “You gonna tell me who Jun is?”Minghao has never heard a more loaded question in her life. Jun is so many things. She’s Minghao’s best friend. She’s someone Minghao hasn’t spoken to in three years. She’s the first girl Minghao ever loved; she’s the last girl Minghao ever loved. Jun made Minghao infinitely better, and yet paradoxically, she ruined her for anyone else.“Someone I used to know,” is all Minghao settles for saying.Vernon’s brow creases, as if he understands that this is probably out of his realm as a suffering IT. “Sounds complicated.”[Minghao reconciles herself to the fact her feelings are unreciprocated before she even really understands what feelings are. But that was back then. Now she has absolutely no idea where she stands. Or, if she even stands anywhere at all.]





	1. Take One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [directorscut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/directorscut/gifts).



For Xu Minghao, prom is a night to forget. 

She’s already halfway there: dress tucked away in the back of her closet, never to be worn again; pictures ran through the shredder, save for a blurry one of her and Seokmin wearing oversized sunglasses; mascara washed off her face, only a faint smudge of black on her left cheek. The stuff is hell to get rid of. 

She wipes her eyes again and hates how the back of her hand comes away wet. 

\---

Fortunately, that isn’t where the story begins. 

Minghao would hate if it was— she despises crying. So, for her own sake, she starts the story with the beginning of junior year, with Mingyu accidentally setting his right sleeve on fire with a Bunsen Burner. 

Minghao adores chemistry— specifically, she adores her seatmates. Seokmin’s the only one she’s close friends with, but Jihoon and Mingyu’s banter will never not be entertaining. They have a system: Minghao’s the one that does the written work, Jihoon handles the chemicals, Seokmin calls out observations, and Mingyu spills something. 

“Mingyu, remember safety hazards today,” Seokmin says, thirty minutes prior to Mingyu’s sweatshirt going ablaze. 

Minghao smirks, strapping on her goggles. “Mingyu  _ is  _ the safety hazard.” 

“Amen,” Jihoon chimes in dryly. “Mingyu, if you break another test tube, I swear I’ll drink this entire beaker of hydrochloric acid.” 

Seokmin laughs. “Jihoon, what music you want at your funeral, then?” 

Mingyu flips him off. 

The conversation drifts off into a tangent, as it usually does: first to how Seokmin’s going to murder the kid who stands next to him in choir for always singing off key, and then to the new song Jihoon’s composing for dance club. 

“Oh yeah, Soonyoung showed it to me yesterday,” Minghao chimes in— she’d mostly been listening so far, chipping in when she sees fit. “It’s lit.” 

“Like the birthday candles,” Seokmin says, referencing a joke that Minghao’s never quite gotten. “How’s… dance club, by the way?” 

“He means Soonyoung,” Mingyu helpfully supplies. “How’s _ Soonyoung _ , by the way.” 

Seokmin glares, but it’s half-hearted. “Shhhh.” 

Jihoon gags from where she’s setting up the Bunsen Burner. “Why does it always come back to someone’s sad love life? Minghao is the only one I like here.” 

“Just because  _ you  _ have half a chance doesn’t mean the rest of us do,” Mingyu retorts. “Wonwoo still won’t look at me.” 

And the universe is a cruel thing, so this is when Mingyu catches on fire. 

Minghao pushes their data aside and shoves Mingyu under the emergency shower; he blinks, sopping wet and dead-eyed. Jihoon asks him seventeen times if he’s alright before she decides he’s okay and lets herself laugh. Seokmin seems traumatized and offers to let Mingyu borrow his gym clothes. 

“Don’t pity me,” Mingyu says, dignified. “I know I’m pathetic.” 

They’re all kind of pathetic, really. Jihoon’s had a crush on this guy named Seungcheol since forever— he’s in university now, and they only talk over weekends. Mingyu likes this girl named Wonwoo, who unfortunately happens to be the  _ one _ person in school who is impervious to Mingyu’s good looks and easy charisma. Seokmin’s current flame is Minghao’s acquaintance from dance club, Soonyoung— Minghao can see the appeal, and she doesn’t even like guys. 

And Minghao— 

She shakes her head. Not the time to start thinking about Jun. Not when Mingyu is scorched and damp and they’re in danger of failing their lab. 

Seokmin drums his fingers on the tabletop. “I can’t believe Mingyu literally just got roasted.” 

Jihoon sighs. 

\---

They get all the data down, fortunately. Minghao can figure out all of the calculations later and send it via email. She’s pretty good at math— she doesn’t like it all too much, not the way some of the kids in her school do, but it’s decent enough for chemistry. 

It’s lunchtime now, and she and Seokmin are crammed at the very end of one of the long rectangular tables. A stray tangerine sits a couple feet away, neither of them willing to touch it. Next to them, a guy describes, in very graphic detail, what he did Saturday night. Minghao does her best to tune that out. 

“Mingyu suggested we form a lonely hearts club,” Seokmin says morosely, dragging a fry through his ketchup. “We all knock over chemicals and cry together.” 

“Ew.” 

“I know, I know, he was joking. Whatever. I can’t believe the guy set himself on fucking fire— didn’t he cut you with a test tube two weeks ago?” 

Mingyu’s the best with his hands out of all of them, but he’s clumsy in chemistry. It’s probably got a lot to do with the fact Wonwoo is across the room, diligently measuring out copper chloride crystals in her knee-length black skirt. 

“It was one week ago,” Minghao says. “And yes, he did.” 

“Mm. I see.” Seokmin pulls a face. “Hao, you want some of my fries?” 

“Bless your soul,” she tells him seriously, and grabs a handful. 

She’s technically always on a diet, because her parents want her to be and her dance coach wants her to be, but Minghao herself does not give a crap. She bites into one of the fries and licks sodium off of her fingers. 

Seokmin plants his face on the grimy plastic table. “I hate everything.” 

… She should’ve known something was wrong when Lee Seokmin willingly gave away his food. “I’m sorry,” Minghao says. “Wanna talk about it?” 

“My parents checked my grades again,” he says, and Minghao winces. “I’ve got this choir thing in a week, and they’re not gonna let me go.” 

“How far is it?” Minghao asks. “And when exactly? We could ask Jun to drive you. I totally bet she’d be willing to do it.” 

Seokmin shakes his head. “Thanks for the offer, but I’d rather not get murdered.” 

Seokmin’s got a complicated relationship with his parents. He loves them, and they love him, but they don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. And Minghao knows Seokmin, knows how he’s got a heart that’s way too big for his own good, so it’s harder because Seokmin feels  _ guilty _ . For like, being gay. And for wanting to sing and stuff.

It’s a little easier for Minghao. Her family doesn’t talk about it too much, and her mom tries to understand. Her dad doesn’t say anything when Minghao cuts her hair in the bathroom mirror, although she can read the disappointment in his frown lines. 

She knows that her parents are proud of her for making straight As and never needing to be called down to the office. She also knows that they’re worried because she always heads straight to the guys’ section in clothing stores (currently, she’s wearing baggy jeans and a gray sweatshirt), that the only person she has over is Seokmin, that she and Jun don’t talk as often as her parents would like, and that Minghao never gets invited to anyone else’s birthday parties. 

“Soonyoung was going to be there, too,” Seokmin says quietly. 

Minghao swallows. “You should  _ not  _ have given me your fries,” she says, and Seokmin just shrugs. “Okay— you know what? This is not okay. This is too sad. Let’s go get ice cream this afternoon and not talk about our feelings.” 

Emotional repression. That’s something the both of them have learned, too. 

\---

Seokmin once said that Minghao is the last thing from pathetic, but she wonders if it’s true. 

She doesn’t even know how long she’s liked Jun for. Ever since she was a zygote, splitting itself in the womb; her DNA probably paused in its reproduction and decided to code her crush into its double helix while she was just a sad sack of stem cells. It’s an exaggeration, but not by much. 

Minghao has liked Jun since the two of them were in carseats, and now Jun can drive. 

Their family— Minghao’s— moves over to the United States when Minghao is around five, so she’s always been split between two worlds. 

Minghao remembers when they first came over. The newness of America. The different smell to the air. How the street signs are unreadable, and how she befriends Jun. 

Minghao’s family is unpacking and filling the house with a slew of cardboard boxes when her mom says, in Mandarin, “Hao—” (this is everyone’s nickname for her. Her mom does not call her  _ xing gan  _ or  _ bao bei _ . It’s  _ Hao _ ) “—Yesterday, when you were sleeping, I met one of the neighbors.” 

Minghao pulls her toys out of one of the boxes and looks at her mom with big eyes. She doesn’t speak all that much. It’s something that her mom says she’ll have to work on, especially since she has to practice her English. 

“They’ve got a daughter a year older than you,” she says. “She’s Chinese, too.” 

Minghao should smile, but she doesn’t. She’s scared. She doesn’t want to meet the girl across the street. Meeting the girl across the street means that she’s officially not in China anymore, and anyway, what if she doesn’t like her? 

The next day, her mom drags her over to the rental house two doors down and rings the doorbell. 

A middle-aged lady opens it, pretty and dark-haired. “Nĭ hăo,” she says.“Nà shì nĭ dè nü er? Ai ya, tā zhēn kě ài!” 

Minghao hides behind her mother’s pants. 

“Jun, come down here!” the other lady calls. There’s the sound of socked feet bounding down stairsteps, then sliding over toward the doorway. “This is your new neighbor, Minghao! She lives two doors down.”  

Minghao reluctantly comes out from behind her mom. Jun smiles at her, and it’s crooked and wide. “I’m Jun!” she says, and her Mandarin comes out fast, like she can’t wait to properly get it out of her mouth. “Let’s be friends!” 

“Okay,” Minghao says quietly, and Jun tugs her into the house. 

It’s good that they become friends, because they literally do not have any other choice. Their moms befriend each other quickly and are constantly inviting each other to dinner parties, to holiday events, stopping by each other’s doorsteps and chatting about stocks and taxes. 

Jun is so, so nice. Minghao doesn’t really like clothes and dolls, but Jun never minds that, despite her own vast collection of hair ties and bracelets. Jun teaches her to make wishes on the crabapple blossoms outside of her house, how to pronounce the words in the books Minghao likes to read. In return, Minghao gives Jun her jelly candies and tells Jun shyly that maybe they will visit Beijing together in the summer. 

Minghao is five, and Jun is six. They say they will be best friends forever. 

\---

In elementary school, the two of them are in different classes, since Jun is in the grade above.

It doesn’t really matter  much, though. They play together at recess. And every other week, someone will ask, “Are you two sisters?” 

And Jun will toss her hair, and say, “No. We’re just Chinese.” 

(Later, Minghao will wonder if it was better when the racism was unintentional, when she didn’t understand it. When kids were just quoting what they saw on TV and Minghao shrugged when a classmate asked, curious, why her eyes were so small, shook her head no when another asked if it was true she ate dog for dinner.) 

She has a crush on Jun then, too, except it isn’t romantic, like it will be later. Minghao just tries to emulate everything Jun does. One time, she even tries to do her hair Jun’s way, in a neat braid down her back, except it goes wrong and her mother has to undo the knotted mess an hour later. 

Minghao finds school easy. She’s in the highest level in reading and math and uses the right amount of paste in classroom projects— something her teacher loves. Her teachers leave glowing comments on her report cards, and someone calls her a teacher’s pet more than once, but she ignores them after her mom and Jun tell her to. 

There’s a routine. Minghao knows that every noon, Jun will be waiting for her on the blacktop— “Let’s go to the swings,” she’ll say, and the two of them will start sprinting because  _ everyone _ wants to go on the swings. Most of the time, they don’t get there fast enough, so they’ll play around on the monkey bars or draw with chalk on the curbing, or collect the acorns that fall to the ground in the autumn. Minghao likes autumn, but she likes winter best; she loves snow. 

“Maybe you’re secretly a winter fairy,” Jun suggests. She’s just read a book like that. 

Jun doesn’t like winter. She’s bundled up in an orange coat that makes her look like a cross between a pumpkin and a marshmallow, and she wears a hat that she calls stupid in a quiet voice, so she won’t get yelled at for language. Snowflakes settle on stray wisps of her black hair, on her eyelashes. 

Minghao purses her lips. “I don’t want to be a fairy. Don’t fairies have to wear dresses?” 

(She’d read the book after Jun read it, too.) 

“Well, I mean, they don’t  _ have  _ to if they don’t want to,” Jun says, after a moment of consideration. “Fairies are cool, they have wings, and you have ice powers and stuff. Because you can touch the snow without gloves.” 

That’s true. Minghao’s bad at making snowmen and snowballs because she gets upset when they stop being round after they get too big, but she can squeeze the snow with her bare hands and mold it into icy little cups and cubes. And Minghao has always wanted to fly. That’s why she jumps off the swings, to Jun’s everlasting terror. 

“Okay,” Minghao concedes, and Jun beams.

She does not question this logic. Minghao is in first grade and Jun in second, and they will drop the topic of fairies in a year altogether, but for the entirety of the semester, one of the irrevocable truths in Minghao’s life is that she is a winter fairy, Jun is a moon fairy, and they are friends, even if seasons and moons don’t have much to do with each other. 

It was so simple, back then. 

They used to wear red rings and pretend they were soulmates, that they were connected by the red thread of fate. It was sixth grade when Jun takes hers off, claiming she lost it. Later, Minghao will find out it’s because someone told Jun she was too old to do these kinds of things with other girls; people might get the wrong idea. 

It doesn’t make Minghao feel any better.

\---

In high school, they aren’t best friends anymore. 

They’re still friends, god. Just friends. Nothing more, nothing less, platonic or romantic. They’re connected— not by a red string, but by the tie of past memories.

Minghao knows that, in a way, she will always be Jun’s person. Jun could show up at her doorstep fifty years later and Minghao would let her stay the night, just as Jun would do the same for her. She knows Jun best out of anyone at their school, and Jun could write a fifty-page diagnosis on a single cross section of Minghao’s personality. 

They’d do anything for each other, except sit together at lunch. 

The dance team is on the way back home from a practice competition. Half of the bus is asleep, a quarter is listening to music with their earbuds plugged in, and the rest are playing paranoia. The rules are simple: a question is whispered, an answer said aloud, and if the coin lands on heads, the question is told to the rest of the bus. 

Minghao isn’t playing; she’s got her head against the window with her eyes half-closed. She isn’t part of dance team, not the way Jun is. Minghao is a valuable asset in competition, but she rarely hangs out with anyone outside of practice; she gets ready on her own despite the fact she struggles with makeup, only comes to afterparties when there’s pizza at stake. 

Soonyoung whispers something into Jun’s ear, and Jun giggles, outraged. “That’s so mean!” she says. 

Soonyoung laughs, too. “Just answer it.” 

“Fine, then— um, Minghao,” Jun finally says. “But it isn’t a  _ bad  _ thing.” 

Minghao, for a single stupid second, feels her hopes fly upward. But then she registers the context her name was said in: whispered and embarrassed. She wonders what question she was the answer to. She hopes she never has to find out. 

Soonyoung flips the coin, silver glinting dully in the dim. It lands heads. Chan, next to them, leans forward in anticipation. 

“Fine,” Soonyoung says. “The question was, who on the bus is most likely to be a virgin for their entire life?” 

Minghao swallows, mouth dry. 

Whatever, Jesus fucking Christ. Logically, she knows that Soonyoung would never want to purposely embarrass her, and she also knows that Jun, as misguided as her words are, would never want to hurt her either, but it still stings. 

Minghao knows what people say about her. That she’s a prude. And, paradoxically, that no one would ever want her. Minghao understands she’s not a conventional kind of pretty, not the way Jun is, with her chest flat as a board and her body all sharp angles. Usually, she doesn’t care. Usually, she can ignore what everyone else thinks, because god knows none of it matters. 

But underneath it all, she’s a fifteen-year-old teenage girl, and sometimes she wants to be wanted. 

She’s in this awkward plane where she’s inexperienced but not innocent. The two things don’t equate— she’s never kissed anyone, and yet she wakes up at night feverish from dreams with too much skin, finds her mind wandering during class to R-rated scenarios. It makes her feel guilty and pathetic, but she doesn’t let any of it show. Especially not to Jun, who most of those scenarios unintentionally revolve around. 

There is one time when she and Jun are in the sweaty space of the school practice room, working on a dance where they’re connected by a ribbon. Jun had told Soonyoung about elementary school, about the red string of fate episode, and he had suggested they work it into choreography. 

“Man, I’m so glad this red string crap isn’t real,” Jun says, rubbing sweat off her forehead. “I’d be tripping over myself all the damn time.” 

“Like Mingyu,” Minghao murmurs. “He does that, string be damned.” 

“Mingyu? Like, Kim Mingyu?” Jun looks up, and there’s a glint in her eyes that Minghao doesn’t like. “He’s kinda hot.” 

Objectively, he is, in a clumsy, prepubescent kind of way, but Minghao’s not going to say that.“Your point?”

“Nothing. Just commenting.” 

“Keep your comments to yourself, then,” Minghao murmurs, low enough that Jun can’t hear. 

And karma must love her, because she gets so frustrated over Jun’s words that she ends up not paying as much attention as she should, considering that she’s connected to Jun by a ribbon. So fifteen minutes later she crashes over her own feet and falls into Jun, and suffice to say—

They’re really close together. 

Like, they’re  _ really _ close together. Jun is wearing shorts and a baggy t-shirt and Minghao can feel all of her curves, the natural heat radiating off her skin, and to Minghao’s horror she can feel her own body responding. She immediately scrambles away, a blush high on her cheeks that she hopes can be passed off as exertion. 

“Whoa, you okay?” Jun asks, her eyes are genuinely concerned. “No floor burn? I’m a decent cushion?” 

Dear god, and now Jun is asking if she’s a good cushion. “I’m okay,” Minghao mumbles. “This choreo’s just insane.” 

“I don’t know, maybe this is how we’ll win. Let’s crash into each other and the judge will give us full points.” 

“You’re ridiculous.” It comes out too harsh. Minghao swallows and tries again. “Obviously, we need to crash into each other  _ twice  _ for that to happen.” 

“Obviously.” 

She sticks a hand down her pants that night, hating herself and her fucking hormones, and then she goes downstairs at 2AM with the moon too bright outside the windows and works on the choreography until it’s imprinted in her bones as a dry ache. 

The next time the two of them practice together, Minghao does it perfectly while Jun stumbles, and Minghao can see both the confusion and frustration in Jun’s eyes. They don’t speak that session. 

Back on the bus, Minghao grits her teeth and reminds herself that Jun can be an idiot. When the two of them get back to school, Minghao grips the strap of her backpack and tells Chan he did a good job before waving goodbye. She feels Jun’s hand on her arm and whirls around, trying not to let any emotion show on her face. 

They’re too close together on the sidewalk. Wind cuts across her face. 

Jun removes her hand. “Hao—I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” Minghao says neutrally. “I don’t know what you’re sorry for.” 

Jun chews her lips. Her braid is messy and undone. “For the virgin comment. I kind of panicked. I didn’t mean it or anything.” 

Minghao heaves a sigh. “You said it yourself, it’s not a bad thing.” Jun watches her, eyes helpless. “Jesus, stuff like that doesn’t bother me. If anything, it bothers you.” 

The last sentence comes out unintentionally barbed. “You always seem like you’re too cool for that kind of stuff.” 

“I don’t even know what that  _ means _ ,” Minghao says, although she does, kind of. She can’t stand to talk about this anymore, though. “You know what  _ was  _ cool, though? That flip Soonyoung did today— he’s been working on it for  _ ages _ —” 

She’s always given Jun easy ways out. 

Minghao doesn’t cry. She rarely ever cries— not when her parents yell at her, not when she and Seokmin fight— and this is not an exception. 

She is tired, though. Not just physically— that practice competition was hell— but also because of what Jun said.  _ Too cool _ ? What does Jun mean by that? Minghao doesn’t care about what people think about her, doesn’t care if people want her or not, but that’s not really a  _ choice _ or anything. If she cared about those sorts of things, she’d be forever deprived of validation. 

So maybe this is Jun’s sugarcoated way of calling her lame. 

\---

Middle school is when everything falls apart. 

Minghao’s body revolts against her— she scrubs her face and gets acne anyway, she has to cross her arms over her chest when she changes in the locker room, she wakes up one morning to her underwear looking like it’d been doused in dark red paint and wonders if she’s dying. And it’s also when everyone starts dating around. 

“I don’t get it,” Minghao mumbles one day, in math. 

“Neither do I,” her seatmate says, and Minghao has a moment of panic when she irrationally wonders if her mind’s been hacked. “What question are you on?” 

Oh, that. “The last one.” 

“Dude, you’re there already? Wait up and help me with number four.” 

Schoolwork is easy. The eight-period curriculum takes some time to adjust to, but Minghao learns to carry around a planner and to keep a mental list of who she talks to in each period. So she has that covered. What she doesn’t get is the romantic aspect of it— everyone else’s double digits seems to come with crushes and first kisses and fake-dates at the local coffee shop, and Minghao wonders if for her, that package got lost in the mail. 

She doesn’t particularly have anything against guys. She makes friends with this guy named Seokmin pretty early on in seventh grade, and he’s nice, but she doesn’t see the appeal of anything  _ beyond _ friendship. 

“Why do people think we’re dating?” she asks Seokmin, one day. 

“Trust me, it weirds me out too,” Seokmin says, fake-shivering, and Minghao feels a lot better, even though she’s pretty sure that might not be the correct reaction. 

Girls, on the other hand— 

Jun, in middle school, starts experimenting with eyeliner and bobs and ripped jeans and tank tops with glitter around the necklines. None of it is particularly revealing, and Jun doesn’t know what she’s doing. Her wingtips look terrible the first half dozen tries, and her bra size is an A for all of seventh grade. 

But it doesn’t matter. Because Minghao looks. And she can’t stop looking. She realizes that this is not normal right off the bat— Minghao has never been dense. 

Maybe she wants to hold Jun’s hand. Maybe she wants to take her out for ice cream. Maybe she listens to love songs and thinks about Jun instead of some guy in her history class. She tries the word  _ lesbian  _ on for size and decides it fits pretty well. 

The first person she tells is Seokmin. “I think,” Minghao says, “I might be gay.” 

She cringes at how awkwardly it comes out. Seokmin freezes, and for a single terrifying second, Minghao is sure that Seokmin is going to make fun of her. But then his face shifts back to his natural smile, and her body sags with relief. 

“Really? So like— you like girls?” 

_ One  _ girl, but sure, probably. “Yeah…” 

“That’s so weird,” Seokmin says, incredulous. “Because I think I might like guys.” 

Minghao stares in disbelief, then lets out a laugh. She can’t stop, and eventually Seokmin joins in, the two of them just laughing with their backs against the lockers. 

“That’s a nice coincidence,” Minghao finally wheezes. “Can we switch brains?” 

“Dude, I’d be up for that. You’re like twelve times smarter than me, so it works out perfectly.” 

“I don’t think that’s true, but I wouldn’t mind taking your vocal chords in compensation.” 

“Right, just give me a second to like, rip them out. Jeez, Hao, you drive a hard bargain.” 

They make jokes about how awkward locker room changings are, ask each other if their gay is showing, say they should go on double dates sometime, if they ever stop being single. But it’s also a show, at least for Minghao; she’s lonely and afraid, and jokes cover that up. She’s already had people tell her no one would want her— what  _ now _ ?

\---

The second person she tells is Jun. 

That’s for two reasons. (1) She  _ likes  _ Jun, and if Jun were disgusted with her, then Minghao would have a problem. (2) Minghao might hang out with Seokmin more, but Jun will always be her favorite. 

It’s sad. They don’t have any classes together, they don’t sit together at lunch, they hang out with different groups of people. The two of them don’t run out of things to talk about when they’re alone, but as Minghao watches Jun’s back vanish into a sea of people cooler than her, she’s a little too afraid to try and fish her out. Wouldn’t that be presumptuous, anyway? 

They’re on the phone one night when she tells her, Minghao on the landline and Jun on the cheap cell phone she’d received a month ago. Minghao’s fingers haven’t memorized Jun’s new number yet, so she always has to check the piece of paper on the wall for the digits. 

Minghao doesn’t even remember what they’re talking about when Jun laughs, sounding like a bell. “Jesus, Hao, you’re so weird sometimes.” 

She says it fondly, but it makes something inside Minghao twist uncomfortably. Yeah, yeah, she’s weird— she knows how to take a simple derivative but doesn’t know how to flirt, she uses words like  _ asphyxiate  _ but stutters when she asks for a sandwich in the cafeteria. Whatever. Why does it matter? 

Minghao opens her mouth and gets the sense she’s tipping off the edge of a cliff. “Yeah, that’s nothing, Jun. Because guess what? I like girls.” 

She doesn’t  _ mean  _ to say it. 

And Jun goes dead silent for a second before she immediately starts rambling her support.  _ That’s okay, Minghao, I guess I know who to set you up with now, you’re going to find someone who’s really cute, okay, and then we can go on double dates!  _ Minghao should feel good about it, but the selfish part of her just feels worse. 

At least Jun didn’t call her a dyke, or anything like she’s seen in movies. 

But it soon becomes obvious that Jun herself is painfully, painfully straight. She tells Minghao about the guy at camp who gave her his number, and then the boy in her math class who makes the funniest jokes, etc. etc. — Jun’s crushes are shallow and fleeting, but they’re painful to hear about anyway. 

She gets a boyfriend in eighth grade, and Minghao has to pretend she’s happy. “I’ll knife him if he does anything wrong.” Her voice sounds empty to her own ears. “Or use my nunchucks on him. Or stick a fork in his eyes.” 

“Graphic,” Jun laughs. “But thank you.”

Jun’s the one that breaks up with him four weeks later, and she and Minghao eat a pint of Oreo ice cream before Jun forgets his name. 

It’s the start of a long string of dates— Jun stops  _ crushing  _ on people, and starts  _ acting  _ on them. She’s pretty enough that guys usually like her back, or are willing to give her a chance. Minghao closes her eyes and goes along for the ride, wondering when the rollercoaster will stop, wondering if it will ever be her turn. 

\---

“Soonyoung said your name.” 

It’s with absolutely no context, but Seokmin drops the test tube, and a stray shard cuts Minghao on the ring finger. 

“Oh my god,” Seokmin says, stricken, “I am  _ so  _ sorry—” 

“No,” Minghao says, gritting her teeth, “I deserved that. I kind of dropped that on you with no warning.” 

“Wow, for once, an accident happened, and it  _ isn’t _ Mingyu’s fault,” Jihoon muses. “I’m impressed.” 

Minghao rolls her eyes, then goes over to the cabinet to get out the dust pan to sweep up the broken shards and tell the chem teacher they’ve broken yet  _ another _ piece of lab equipment. 

“So what exactly happened?” Seokmin asks, vaguely resembling a puppy begging for scraps. “You can’t just drop something like that on me and not explain.” 

“Minghao can do anything she wants, you just injured her,” Jihoon says. “Don’t look constipated about it.” 

“I want to hear about this,” Mingyu says to no one in particular. 

Minghao feels like she’s raised their expectations too high. “Nothing. We were playing paranoia on the way back from the practice dance competition, and then Chan asked Soonyoung a question, and Soonyoung said,  _ Seokmin _ .” 

Seokmin bounces on his feet. “And what was the question?” 

“I don’t know, the coin landed on tails,” Minghao says. Seokmin looks like she just punched him in the stomach. “You could ask him, I guess.” 

“That’s not a conversation that will ever happen, ever,” Seokmin says sullenly, and goes to measure out some zinc crystals. 

Mingyu hums. “How was the dance practice competition, anyway?” 

Minghao shrugs. “It was pretty good, I think. We’re up against some hard competition this year.” 

“But you’re really good,” Mingyu says. “I guess I’m biased, though, since I know you.” 

Minghao bites her bottom lip and takes notes, a little flustered. A lot of girls would kill to be in her position, Mingyu giving her such easy compliments; she wants to tell them the reason he’s comfortable doing that is because he doesn’t really consider her a girl. 

Sometimes she wishes the four of them hung out outside of class. Later she will wonder why she never tried harder to make that happen. Maybe it was because Jihoon always seemed like she preferred to be alone, or because of Mingyu’s popularity. Whatever the reason, they’re friends only in the context of chemistry. 

At the end of senior year, Jihoon will write in her yearbook,  _ I wish we got to know each other better _ , and by then it will be too late.  

Afterward, when Minghao and Seokmin are walking down the hallway to the next class, Seokmin asks further about the game of paranoia. Seokmin knows that she’s probably already divulged all that there’s to be said, since their lab table has become some sort of confession ground, but he’s just verifying. 

Minghao hoists her backpack up. “I would tell you if he’d mentioned you again.” She sighs. “Jun said  _ my  _ name, by the way.” 

Seokmin’s eyes widen. “And… do you know the question?” 

“Yeah. And it was,  _ who on this bus is most likely going to be a virgin for their entire life _ ?” 

Seokmin’s mouth drops open, almost comically. “You’ve got to be shitting me.” 

“Seokmin, I spend my time on more useful things than making this stuff up.” 

“That’s so  _ rude _ , though,” he says, and Minghao quietly wonders why being a virgin has such a negative societal connotation. She doesn’t know how to phrase her frustration, but something about her worth being decided (even partly) by what she does with someone else rubs her the wrong way. “Why would she say that?” 

Minghao shrugs. “She needed to pick someone. I was there. She apologized later, and said something about me being too cool for that kind of thing.” 

Seokmin looks sad, knowing Minghao is more upset then she lets on. “I don’t get why you like her.” 

“I don’t, either. If this were logical, I might’ve picked someone a little less— you know—  _ straight _ .” 

It’s just— Jun’s not a bad person, or anything. She isn’t a villain, even if sometimes, she can seem like one. Besides, it’s just a testament to how good Minghao is at hiding that Jun can say this shit and not know how much any of it hurts. 

\---

Minghao lied. 

She knows exactly why she likes Jun, and she doesn’t know how to say it, except that being with Jun is like drugs. 

Not that she’s really talking from prior experience— how does one go about obtaining drugs, anyway? She’s not friends with enough people to have connections, and she certainly doesn’t have enough money. 

But Jun is like drugs in the sense that the high is always enough to keep Minghao addicted. 

Minghao dislikes it, but she’ll read into things with Jun deeper than with any of her other friends, will analyze every word and touch and look. Logically, she knows it doesn’t mean anything, but that doesn’t stop her brain from spinning fairy tales around it anyway. It’s pathetic, but that’s what feeds the flame. Fantasies. 

There’s two scenarios in particular that she has tucked away in her mind, like fool’s gold. In the middle of the night, her brain will take them out and hold their weight in its hands, and her dreams will leave her feeling a little more lonely for the next morning. 

\--- 

The first time is in the spring of freshman year. 

Jun’s piano teacher has rented out a fancy piano shop for the recital. Jun plays Beethoven’s  _ Tempest  _ and privately tells Minghao later that she is sorry for boring all of the little children in the crowd with twenty pages of dissonant chords. 

The recital is finished and most everyone has left, but Jun lingers behind to examine all of the expensive pianos, and Minghao stays with her. 

“Why are all of these so pricey?” Jun whines. 

Sometimes, she complains about how the piano in her house has several keys stuck and is constantly off tune with the weather, but Minghao also knows, paradoxically, that Jun loves the thing to death. 

Minghao pats her on the shoulder, comforting. “Buy one when you’re rich and famous.” 

“That’s a plan. Honestly, though, fuck everyone in this neighborhood who has a grand piano in the house just for the sake of decoration.” 

An employee comes over, looking extraordinarily hassled. “Excuse me,” he says, “but you’re not supposed to be near these pianos— there’s a couple in the back of the store that you can play, though.” 

“I’m sorry,” Jun says, sugar-sweet, and Minghao can see the employee melts. 

When he’s left, though, Jun’s mouth flattens and her eyes narrow into daggers. “God, this place is so pretentious,” she mutters. “But whatever. Let’s go to the back of the store, unless you want to leave. Then we can go.” 

“No, I’m fine. C’mon.” 

The pianos at the back of the store aren’t as nice, but they’re still perfectly respectable. Jun takes a seat at one of them and runs her hand over the keys. There’s a table of refreshments, and Minghao grabs two leftover cookies before walking over to where Jun’s sitting. 

Jun points at her mouth, then gestures at the cookie. She’s been on a diet since seventh grade, but she likes sweet things with a passion. 

“I can’t touch it because of the instrument,” she says. So Minghao hesitantly lifts the cookie up to Jun’s lips, and Jun grins and takes a bite. 

Her mouth accidentally grazes Minghao’s hand, even though Minghao is as careful as possible not to touch her. Her pink lip gloss leaves a soft smear on Minghao’s index finger. It feels like a brand. 

“Thanks,” Jun beams. “Dude, that tastes so good.” 

Minghao’s heart gives a betrayed stutter. “What are you going to play?”  

Jun bites her lip. “Well, you know, my go-to is  _ Clair de Lune _ .” 

She likes music from the Classical and Impressionist periods the best, claiming she can’t stand that Romantic shit, even though she has a soft spot for Chopin.

“But I learned something for you,” she continues. 

She sets her hands down on the keys, and the notes that flow out sound really familiar. Minghao recognizes it two seconds in that Jun’s playing  _ Sparkle  _ from Kimi No Na Wa, the best song from her favorite movie. Jun is wearing a purple dress that floats around her like a cloud, her hair is in a French braid down her back, and Minghao likes her so much it almost physically hurts. 

She doesn’t know, in that moment, how she’ll ever look Jun in the eye again. 

Jun finishes up the song and beams. “I found the sheet music in my teacher’s bookshelf and thought you’d like it.” 

“I do,” Minghao says lamely. “Thank you.” 

Jun makes her feed her another bite from a cookie before Minghao’s mom takes a photo of the two of them, Jun in her dress at the piano and Minghao in her plain tee and sneakers, watching Jun intently. Minghao looks at the photo later and immediately begins damage control, telling herself this is a one day thing and not to get her hopes up. 

The next day, Jun barely talks to her at school, and Minghao isn’t surprised at all. This is how it always is. Yesterday was just a fluke. 

\---

The other time is New Year’s of Minghao’s sophomore year; they’d resolved to stay up to midnight, the full works. Jun is drinking grape juice, pretending it’s vodka, and faking getting drunker by the second. It’s not funny, but it also is. 

“Any New Year’s resolutions?” Jun asks, slurring her words. 

“To not kill my pet rock,” Minghao says, and Jun shoots her a dry look, no longer faux-drunk. “Hey, I’m being  _ realistic _ .” 

“That’s good,” Jun muses. “I mean, if anyone could kill an inaminate object, it’d be you. Remember Kermit the cactus?” 

Minghao shoves Jun, who laughs. Minghao had seen the plant in the window of one of the local florists when she was heading to Walmart and fell in love. It looked like it was  _ dabbing _ . But Kermit had only lasted two months in her care. 

“We don’t speak of Kermit,” she says curtly. “And what about you? What about your New Year’s Resolution?” 

Jun purses her lips, twirls the stem of her empty wine glass. “It’s lame. And also probably really unrealistic.” 

“Sounds like you.” 

Jun laughs. “You’re so mean, Hao.” A pause. “But… yeah. It’s to stop like. Caring so much about what everyone thinks of me.” 

“That’s not lame,” Minghao says, voice quiet. “And I have faith in you.” 

Jun shakes her head. “I don’t get how that stuff comes so easy for you,” she whispers, so soft that Minghao understands she’s not supposed to respond. 

Minghao wants to tell Jun that stuff doesn’t come easy for her at  _ all _ . She wants to tell Jun that she doesn’t care because she  _ has  _ to not care, that sometimes she wants Jun’s ability to curl her hair and do her eyeliner and shoot a smile at a guy and have the guy immediately fall for her. Sometimes, Minghao wants to be conventionally pretty so badly it aches. But Minghao says none of this, and lets Jun keep her current beliefs. 

“The fireworks are starting soon,” she says instead. 

Jun seems relieved at the topic change. “Excellent. You wanna head out?” 

They step out and it’s freezing, Minghao shivering in her bulky coat and jeans, Jun faring no better in her thick pants and just-for-show boots. 

They go over to the hill where many of their neighbors and schoolmates have also gathered to watch the fireworks. Someone is handing out free cups of hot chocolate. Minghao internally blesses their soul and prays that they’ll have a good new year. 

“Wanna get hot chocolate with me?” Minghao asks. 

“Um.” 

Minghao is pretty sure she knows what’s going through Jun’s head. “Everything resets at midnight, Jun. The calories don’t count.” 

“ _ No _ .” Jun’s face flushes defensively in a way that tells Minghao that she’s probably right. “I just don’t want to have to pee, okay? Hot chocolate isn’t good on the bladder.” 

“Alright,” Minghao says, not pushing it, and goes to get a cup for herself. 

In a few minutes, Jun steals the cup from Minghao, wrapping her hands around it for warmth, and Minghao lets her. A stray firework explodes in the sky. “It’s starting!” someone says. 

“It’s so pretty,” Jun murmurs, as the rest of the fireworks unfold one after the other and paint the skies with their fiery reds and golds, the light flashing on her face. 

Minghao is not looking at Jun, she’s  _ not _ . She can look at Jun anytime. She can’t look at fireworks anytime. “Yeah,” she murmurs.

The two of them watch the fireworks, and Minghao loses herself in the flash-bang and the smoky afterimages and thinks about how she could paint this later on, turn in a picture to her art teacher of two dark silhouettes standing on a hill watching the fiery spectacle. Jun points at specific fireworks that she likes the shapes of and probably drinks more than half of Minghao’s hot chocolate. 

Eventually, the fireworks slow to a trickle, the grand finale already having graced the skies. Someone calls out that it’s five minutes to midnight. 

“You gonna find someone to kiss?” Minghao asks Jun, joking-but-not-really. 

Jun raises her shoulder in a shrug that’s elegant even in a thick coat. “Mm…” 

Minghao regrets broaching the subject. For the past two years, she and Jun haven’t spent New Year’s together— Jun was always invited to some party or other, and Minghao also knows that Jun’s done the midnight kiss for the past three years. 

“It’s kinda cliche, at this point,” Jun finally says. “What about you?” 

Minghao scoffs. “You know me. Who’d want to kiss me?” 

“Plenty of people.” 

_ Not you _ . “Fine,” Minghao says. “Rephrase. Who’d I want to kiss?” 

“And that’s more like it,” Jun laughs, a pretty sound in the night. “I’d rather spend midnight with you. It’s lame, but I’m glad you’re here, you know? You’ve always been here. More than any other random person.” 

Jun’s words fill her with more warmth than any hot chocolate ever could.  Minghao doesn’t have the capacity to say something back, so she stands there and hopes her blush isn’t too obvious. Midnight passes, and the two of them don’t kiss, but Jun is there, warm and solid and real, and Minghao thinks desperately that this has to be enough for now. 

\---

“Are you going to prom?” Seokmin asks, junior year. 

Minghao groans, smashing her face to her desk. They’re supposed to be working on stuff, but Minghao thought it was due today, so she spent all night doing it, and now she’s tired and cranky. “Right— prom’s a thing.” 

Seokmin sighs. “I wouldn’t know either, but Mingyu told me about it.” 

Minghao peels her face off her desk and rubs her eyes. “Are  _ you  _ going?” 

Seokmin shrugs. “Eh, probably,” he says. “Me and Mingyu and a couple of other people are going as a large group. You should come with.” 

“Or I could eat pizza and study for the SATs.” 

“Okay, that’s not even a good alternative.” 

Minghao just groans again. 

She doesn’t remember the last time she’d had a day with no homework. Minghao’s diligent and generally good at time management, but her schedule is fraying at the edges from being overpacked— maybe all those AP tests weren’t a good idea. 

Anyway, she’s being destroyed by fifteen different classes, and on top of that, she has to worry about college— who the hell thought it was a good idea to stick  _ prom  _ into all of that? 

“C’mon, Hao. For me?” 

Minghao pulls a face. “Fine. Now let me sleep.” 

“Mingyu’s gonna ask Wonwoo,” Seokmin tells her limp form.

“I’m too tired for gossip.” A second later— “Actually, wanna bet how that goes?” 

Prom fever never _quite_ reaches Minghao, even though secretly, she feels her heart warm seeing posters and confessions, because deep down she is (unfortunately) a romantic. At least it gives her inspiration— her final project for her art class is a dress. The teacher did say any medium. 

“Dude, you  _ made  _ that?” Mingyu marvels, when he sees it. 

Minghao nods, a little shy about her work. “It’s just like, some fabric and math. Fifty dollars tops.” 

Jihoon touches the skirt, fascinated. “Are you going to major in fashion?” 

The four of them have finished up their lab and are now looking at the dress, bundled up in Minghao’s bag. Mingyu keeps touching it, and Minghao would make a joke about how the dress is probably going to implode just in Mingyu’s presence, if it didn’t make her so happy to see his admiration. 

“Maybe,” Minghao says, slightly flustered. “Either that or architecture.” 

“I can see the relation,” Seokmin says. “Homes are just, like, really big dresses, kinda?”

“Yeah, sure, and maybe Minghao can design a duplex for me to wear to prom,” Jihoon says dryly. “And Mingyu, I swear to god if you make a tiny house comment—” 

“I wasn’t going to say anything like that,” Mingyu protests. “Okay. Maybe.” 

Jihoon punches Mingyu in the arm. “I mean, all jokes aside, though, I’d buy a dress from you, Minghao. Prom dresses are expensive, and yours look as good as any of them.”

That isn’t true, but Minghao blushes anyway. “Thanks.” 

“Okay, but, guys, have you heard that Seungcheol’s flying over from uni to go to prom with Jihoon?” Mingyu asks, eyes glinting, looking like he’s been dying to say it all period. “Can you believe this shit?” 

Seokmin and Minghao cheer, and Jihoon mutters something about Mingyu not being able to keep a secret to save his life while trying to keep a smile from spreading over her face. Mingyu looks so legitimately pleased at this turn of events that her words bounce right off of him. 

He says that he needs to live vicariously through  _ someone’s  _ successful romantic endeavor, because he chickened out of asking Wonwoo. “I don’t want to make her uncomfortable,” Mingyu says, expression turning sad. “I think she hates me.” 

Jihoon hugs him, and that probably says everything that needs to be said. 

\--- 

Minghao stands in front of the mirror and looks. 

She’d gotten an A- on the dress. It doesn’t look professional— it’s black and fans out around her knees, more an altered piece of cloth than anything else. She adds a red necklace and gold studs, slips into flats because she’d rather not take her chances with heels, and wonders if she should wear makeup. 

Sometimes she buys nail polish or makeup because the stuff just— it looks so good, so promising, with their silver cases and bright tints. It doesn’t work for her, but she tries to add mascara anyway. The stuff makes her eyes itch and her eyelids feel heavy and she sees no obvious difference, but it’s the principle of it. 

“You look good right now,” Minghao mumbles to her reflection. 

And really, she does. 

It’s a little hard to remember that when she hands over her overpriced ticket and walks into the school; other girls have their makeup professionally done, don’t have nicks and bruises on their legs, and wear name-brand dresses. But Minghao feels pretty, and she doesn’t want to let anyone else ruin that for her. 

“Hey,” Seokmin says, coming next to her, and offers her his arm. 

Minghao snickers, taking it. “We look like a perfect heterosexual couple.” 

“That’s what I was going for,” Seokmin says. “Let’s dance?” 

“Absolutely. I came for the bad music. And the fruit punch.” 

“Nah, you gotta pay for the punch,” Seokmin sighs. “Apparently we went a little over budget this year and have to compensate.” 

“Dude, that sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

It’s fun, improvising choreography and leaving Seokmin in the dust. A song from one of their dance competitions comes up, and she finds Soonyoung and does a lame, incomplete rendition of their routine with him— it’s not like she can do backflips here. Minghao knows that Seokmin is probably drooling over at the side. She’d told him she’d burn incense to increase his prom night chances; she doesn’t own incense, but she’d lit a scented candle, and figured that’s the same thing in millennial culture. 

She stops dancing sooner than she would like, though, because her shoes are pinching her heels. Flats are a lesser evil, but Minghao still prefers sneakers anyday. 

“Minghao!” Jun says, and Minghao looks up. “It’s nice to see you here.” 

Minghao coughs, shifts. Jun is wearing a red dress, and her hair, while usually dyed some sort of pretty pastel shade, is back to natural black. Her mouth is a crimson gash. Minghao doesn’t know where to look. 

They didn’t talk about prom. It was a given that Jun would go with a date, and Minghao would— do whatever. And here Jun is, decidedly dateless, holding a half-full water bottle, snapping pictures of the dance floor with her cell phone. 

“Take a selfie with me,” Jun says, and Minghao, unbidden, nods. 

Minghao likes photography— Jun once said she’s got an entire roulette of hobbies— but Jun knows more about taking selfies, so she lets Jun turn them so the lighting is the best, then hold it up to the right angle before pressing the shutter. 

“ _ Yes _ ,” Jun says, and taps a couple of buttons, presumably uploading it on Instagram. “Hao, you look good. Did I say that?” 

“Thanks, and no, I don’t think so.” 

“Well, you do.” Minghao looks down at her feet. “This is nice. Super high-school, but you know. That’s where we are.” 

“I thought you had a date?” 

Jun waves this off. “Eh, he actually asked me to make another girl jealous. Romance politics, and all that.” Like she doesn’t partake in those herself on a daily basis. “You look way better than he does, anyway.” 

Minghao feels annoyance flare up in her— Jun can’t just  _ say  _ shit like that, although obviously Jun can, because she just did. It makes Minghao wish she’d gone through with her threat and stayed home for prom night; multivariable calculus is easier than this.  

“Thanks, I guess?” 

Jun hums. “Do you have a date, Hao?” 

Minghao snorts. “No.” And now she sounds mad. She’s not even sure why she’s mad, but she is, and it’s showing. “Me and Seokmin went with a bunch of people. I guess he’s my date, except we’re not exactly couple material.” 

Jun bites her lip, shrinking in on herself. “I don’t get why you never date.” 

“Maybe I don’t want to?” Minghao says. “It’s not an issue I care about? Christ. It’s not like it’s as easy for me as it is for you, anyway.” 

“Don’t play that card on me,” Jun says, eyes narrowing, meeting Minghao’s wrath with her own, even if she has no idea what that wrath is about. “Plenty of people would like you if you just tried. Hell,  _ I’d  _ date you, when you’re not being such a bitch, at least.” 

It’s enough to shut Minghao up, just for a second. 

And then she thinks,  _ fuck it _ . It’s prom night. Jun is going to college next year, Minghao doesn’t have any makeup to ruin, and Jun’s probably wearing waterproof mascara. Minghao’s mom always told her not to make any decisions in the heat of the moment, but she’s sixteen, and high school has always been a time for unrequited love, anyway. 

“Would you date me?” Minghao retorts. “Would you, really.” 

“Yeah, of course, is that even a question?” Jun spits. Then she catches the look in Minghao’s eyes and takes a step back, uncertain. 

“Because I’ve wanted to date you for the past five years...” Minghao continues, the words tasting like acid in her mouth. She refuses to break eye contact. “So don’t say stuff you don’t mean, Jun.” 

Jun’s face is a whole spectrum of emotion: confusion, comprehension, sadness, guilt, anger, before everything dissipates, and all that’s left is apology. The expected outcome. Minghao feels a sick amusement twist her gut, because in these kinds of scenarios, it’s either laugh or cry, and Minghao certainly isn’t going to do the latter. 

“You,” Jun finally stutters, helpless, “are you saying—” 

“Yeah,” Minghao says, and bites back all the jokes she could make in favor of choking out, “I like you. I want to date you. And I’m— I’m used to you not reciprocating that.” 

She already knows Jun’s answer before Jun even has to say it. “I didn’t—” Jun says softly, “I had no idea.” 

“It’s okay.” 

Jun looks like she’s going to cry. “I’m sorry.” 

“And it’s okay,” Minghao says, and shit,  _ she’s _ going to cry. She might cry, shit. 

She can’t handle the lost expression on Jun’s face, so she turns around and walks away. Jun doesn’t try to stop her. Minghao knew this was going to happen— just for starters, when has Jun displayed an interest in girls, ever— and even if somehow, miraculously, Jun did fall somewhere on the homosexual spectrum, when has she ever displayed an interest in  _ Minghao _ . 

The confirmation hurts like hell anyway. 

Minghao takes her phone out of her bag and shoots a quick message to Seokmin:  _ dude i think the pizza we just ate attacked my intestines… so uh i gotta go  _

Seokmin’s response comes ten minutes later, when Minghao is already in her neighborhood.  _ that sucks,, its less fun without u. feel better though! _

Minghao peels off her dress, which suddenly looks like something out of a kindergartener’s sketchbook, and puts it at the back of her closet. Then she pulls out her SAT flashcards and tries not to relate every stupidly difficult vocabulary word to her own sad excuse of a love life. 

\---

_ Shit _ . 

Minghao’s doorbell rings half an hour later, and it’s Seokmin. Minghao sighs and pulls open the door. “Sorry my house is a mess,” she mumbles. 

They live in one of the shoddier neighborhoods around— her mom’s always saying that they should move, but they never act on it. 

Seokmin’s expression is radiant, and Minghao thinks she knows the cause. 

“You should see my room, it looks like a hurricane vomited in there,” Seokmin says. He hasn’t looked too closely at her yet, too preoccupied with trying to figure out the laces on his dress shoes. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay? Yeah?” 

Minghao doesn’t cry easily. But it’s Seokmin’s concern that finally breaks the damn, and Seokmin’s brilliant expression goes horrified when twin rivers spill over and trace their way down Minghao’s cheeks like some kind of goddamn anime. 

“Guess my eyes are over-lubricated tonight,” she says weakly. “... Fuck.” 

Seokmin looks painfully awkward, and it just makes Minghao cry harder. 

Seokmin is great, and he’s always helped push Minghao forward, but he isn’t Jun. He has no idea what to say when Minghao is just there crying her eyes out because the rejection she knows has been coming for years has finally been voiced. Jun would already be on damage control, telling Minghao she’s amazing and that she’d kill the idiot who didn’t return her feelings, except obviously that doesn’t work here. 

But Minghao is still glad Seokmin is here. 

“You wanna—” Seokmin says. “You wanna talk about it?” 

Minghao wipes her eyes and sniffles. “Hell no,” she says. “I’d rather die.” 

“Then, uh...” 

“Just talk to me like you would normally,” Minghao says, and looks at the ground, wanting her eyes to stop burning. “Tell me all the shit that went down at prom. I’m okay. I know I’m not saying this in a super convincing way, but I swear I am.” 

“Uh,” Seokmin says again. He looks so lost. 

Minghao aggressively rubs her eyes. “Did Soonyoung kiss you?” 

“... Yeah.” 

“Good job,” Minghao says, and she means it. She didn’t want her voice to come out bitter. Now she feels like a bad person for ruining Seokmin’s night. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” Minghao says, voice cracking. “Okay— you know what, Seok, thank you for checking up on me. I’m kind of a mess right now. Like my house. I’ll be back to normal in a few days, I promise. Sorry you had to see this, I’m really happy for you.” 

She makes good on the promise, and she’s back to normal by the time she comes to school the next week. She wraps her heart in duct tape and hopes it heals okay on it’s own, continues to study like her life depends on it, cracks jokes about everything and nothing. Damn if something like this is going to keep her from functioning. 

Just, Jun doesn’t approach her, and Minghao doesn’t approach her either. Turns out it’s not so hard to avoid someone when they’re avoiding you back. 

Minghao understands that some people would call her cowardly, but it isn’t like society’s taught her healthy ways of expressing emotion, and talking to Jun would rip the wound afresh. So they walk on opposite sides of the street, and pretend they can’t see each other in the halls. Ten years of friendship flushed down the drain. 

_ I miss Jun _ , she writes, then crosses it out.  _ I am fine. _

\---

When Minghao gets her SAT scores back, her parents take her out to dinner. 

Minghao decides that she wants to be an architect and scrapes together cash so that she can go to whatever university she wants. Sometimes she dreams about working on housing projects, or being on a team to put together the next Taj Mahal that isn’t the Taj Mahal, because copyright issues. 

Her parents probably still wish she was straight, that she were to be a doctor, but they’ve made peace with her now, and they don’t really argue over anything anymore. Some nights Minghao puts her head on her mom’s lap and they talk in Mandarin. 

Minghao has always looked up toward the stars, but her family keeps her grounded. 

She comes out of high school with her name spelled neatly across a diploma and a scholarship to Pledis University. Maybe she’s missed out on some memories; maybe there are some experiences she won’t get to have. Maybe she’s walking out into the world with some injuries that haven’t healed right. 

The truth is her heart is still shattered, and some nights it hurts so much she can’t breathe. She is young, so maybe her emotions aren’t as mature as they will be in the future, and she’s perseverant, so she won’t something like this stop her, but Jun is also her first love, and it didn’t go right. 

But everyone’s a little bit broken. Minghao thinks she’ll be okay. 


	2. Take Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three Years Later

Minghao’s college experience is normal, if not amazing.

Her roommate is nice: Jisoo is a cross of characteristics that one wouldn’t think would work together, but do. She meditates every morning and has piercings in every imaginable place (and then some); she doesn’t drink and cusses like a sailor (when she chooses to); she was raised by a very strict set of rules and is one of the most accepting people Minghao has ever met (maybe even more so than Minghao herself).

Minghao comments on this one day, although not in so many words. “Yeah, I guess I’m hard to pin down,” Jisoo says, wry. “But I’m pretty sure that’s not a bad thing.”

Minghao hums. “I never said it was.”

“You’d be surprised by how many people hate it,” Jisoo says. “I had to switch roommates every year. Last year, the girl tried to roofie me.”

“What the hell?” Minghao demands. “Dude, that’s messed up. I swear I won’t do something like that.”

Jisoo smiles, and it’s a little sad. “I trust you won’t. I still wear color-change nail polish because of it, though.”

So yeah, Minghao loves Jisoo, in a quiet, platonic way. She’s bad with compliments, so she’ll never tell Jisoo exactly how much she admires her, but that’s fine. Minghao’s certain Jisoo knows, she’s good at just knowing that sort of stuff. They’re not best friends— their social circles completely differ— but Jisoo is a good roommate. She makes sure Minghao doesn’t kill herself studying, and Minghao tries keep the room clean in repayment.

\---

In college, Minghao doesn’t date.

Well, not really. She gets set up on half a dozen blind dates, two of which she didn’t even _know_ were blind dates, two of which were with _guys_. She’s kissed two girls and held hands with one while watching a movie, their fingers gross and buttery from the popcorn. She never goes further. The dates putter off into shallow friendship.

She gets a reputation as the girl at the top of her class— it’s not something that comes to her as naturally as it did back in high school, solely because college is hard. She grapples with concepts, trying to wrangle them into something she can understand, rewrites her notes over and over and looks at problems until they’re printed backwards over her retinas.

She probably looks like she has her life together. Minghao wants to tell them  she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

That’s how she ends up in situations like this: losing at Mario Kart in smeared lip gloss after a failed one-night stand.

Rewind to three hours prior. Jisoo’s donned a skirt and a white t-shirt, and she tells Minghao, “Hey, a couple of my friends are heading to the Black Diamond.” It’s a club nearby that Minghao has sort of heard of. “Wanna come with?”

Minghao peels her face off her textbook. “You’re going to the Black Diamond?”

Jisoo laughs. “You sound so _disbelieving_ ,” she says fondly. “And yes, I am. I’m like, designated driver for these kinds of scenarios.”

“For free?”

“Uh, yeah? My friends are too broke to hire a chauffeur, even for five bucks.”

Jisoo almost makes Minghao believe in humanity again— she didn’t know it was humanly possible for people to be that kind. “Isn’t it boring?”

Her roommate shrugs, blows a bubble with the strawberry-mango gum she was chewing. “It’s got free wifi,” she says, and Minghao nods, even though she doesn’t get it. “Also, you can get good conversations from bars.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, I made friends with this girl named Tae because we were the only two sober people there. We found out we were birthday twins and talked about the moon landing hoax.”

“Well then.” Minghao is amused. She’s got nothing really to do, even if it’s Friday— she was probably just going to sketch or listen to music. “I guess I’m convinced.”

Minghao doesn’t really know what to wear to go clubbing, so she just goes with ripped jeans and a black t-shirt, paired with heavy-duty boots. It’s more out of practicality than anything. She’s pretty sure she’s going to get stepped on at some point in the night, and if someone spills their beer on her, it won’t show too badly.

Black Diamond isn’t her element, but that’s fine. She ends up making small talk with a bartender with a long-suffering expression.

“I’m Jeongguk,” he tells her, while stirring together some kind of green concoction, “and my friend ditched her shift to go make out with her girlfriend. I can’t feel my legs at this point in the night.”

“That’s rough,” Minghao says sincerely. “If it makes you feel better, I came here on a whim and I don’t know anyone.”

“Nice, nice,” Jeongguk says, nodding his head approvingly. “Hey, you want to sword fight with these tiny paper umbrellas?”

\---

One umbrella fight later, which results in an annoyed customer, a spilled drink, and the theory that Jeongguk’s biceps are made of steel, Minghao slides off the stool and heads off toward the dance floor. The music is bad, not even a good sort of bad; she’s contemplating just going home, when a girl taps her on the shoulder.

“Wanna dance?” she says, or at least that’s what Minghao _thinks_ she says, because the drum beat has rendered her numb, and all she can see is the outline of her mouth.

Minghao says, “Why not?”

The girl in front of her beams. “Alright.”

Minghao is good at dancing. She knows that. Dance club was a long time ago, but the technique is ingrained in her despite being slightly rusty, and the girl in front of her seems to appreciate the way she moves. Whatever Jeongguk had made her is kicking in, and her dancing changes to reflect it, although Minghao’s not aware of it on a conscious level.

The girl presses her mouth to Minghao’s ear and says, “Wanna get out of here?”

 _Oh_.

She can hear the girl’s voice now, that close, sweet and a little bit buzzed, kind of like Seokmin if he were a drunk girl. The comparison makes her laugh a little internally, but mostly she’s focused on what the girl means.

She’s inexperienced, but she isn’t _dense_.

And so Minghao takes a look at her, the alcohol slightly clouding her senses— there’s a pretty roundness to the girl’s face, to her curls that hit shoulder length, the clothes that don’t do much to show her body, but don’t do much to hide it either. She kind of looks like someone Minghao used to know.

Minghao thinks, stupidly, _why not_? And then she says it aloud.

They go back to the other girl’s place.

“I’m Seungkwan,” the girl says, in the car.

“Minghao.”

“You dance, like, _really_ well, you know that?”

Minghao blushes, looks down at where there’s a crooked heart carved into the leather seats. “Thank you.”

Minghao doesn’t tell anyone about what happened that night, but Seungkwan knows. How Minghao basically froze up as soon as Seungkwan slipped her hands under her shirt. It’s not something that Minghao really wants to remember, so she fast forwards through it whenever it plays in her mind the next week, how one moment the two of them were kissing and then the next Minghao was halfway across the room.

Seungkwan is ridiculously kind about it. It’s a terrible first meeting, but Seungkwan turns out to be a very nice person.

“I’m so sorry,” Minghao says, for probably the third time. The alcohol has stopped providing any sense of comfort and is now heavy in her veins, dulling her usual wit. “You can kick me out, if you want.”

Seungkwan sighs. “Minghao, it’s okay. I’m not going to kick you out— like, where would you sleep, then? The dumpster?”

“I don’t know, McDonald’s is open twenty-four seven, and I think this place isn’t _too_ far from my apartment—”

“Those aren’t good alternatives,” Seungkwan says, and laughs. “Seriously, it’s fine. Hey, do you like cookies?”

So they slice circles off a convenience store log and then eat it without putting it in the oven first — _I’m too lazy to bake them, so I just buy this kind, I promise you won’t get salmonella_ — then verse each other in Mario Kart. Seungkwan beats her mercilessly on Rainbow Road. Minghao blue shells her the next round in retaliation.

It doesn’t quite erase the embarrassment, but it dulls it significantly. When Minghao goes home the next morning, she’s got a new number on her phone.

\---

Eventually, it gets brought up between the two of them again.

It’s an awkward conversation, and Minghao has to go off on twenty different tangents so she can swallow it down.

Minghao doesn’t like to use the word _virgin_ because the negative connotations taste bitter against her tongue, but in a dictionary sense, that’s what she is. “I don’t know,” she says, finally. “I just, like— I didn’t know. If I’d be good at it. That’s all.”

She’s good at what she does. Architecture, photography, dance, drawing— if she’s not good at it, she’ll practice in secret until she is. For some pretty obvious reasons, you can’t practice sex in secret. That just isn’t how it works.

“It’s not like I’ve done it that many times either,” Seungkwan says, but it’s not said in a judgmental way. “You were like, my third one-night stand.”

Minghao doesn’t even know if what they did counts as a one-night stand, but she’s not going to fight Seungkwan on her choice of words. “Oh,” she says lamely.

“Yeah. Most of us aren’t that good at it either, trust me,” Seungkwan says. “It’s just for fun. Kind of like Mario Kart, actually.”

Minghao nearly chokes. “What the fuck.”

“Hao, do you feel bad?” Seungkwan asks.

(Minghao hasn’t had anyone call her _Hao_ in ages. She’s just Minghao, or Marie, and it takes her back five years.)

“Don’t feel bad, okay? It’s fine. You’re fine.”

Minghao nods mutely, and turns away. “You just ruined Mario Kart for me forever.”

Seungkwan turns blue shelling into an innuendo, and the conversation is dropped in favor of ruining each other’s childhoods. Minghao is kind of glad for that— she doesn’t know how much more of it she could have stood.

She doesn’t want to tell Seungkwan about how when she was younger, she got told that she was cool, but she wasn’t the sort of person anyone would want. She doesn’t want to say how she got told that saving yourself was dumb, that sex wasn’t a big deal, it was just a sport. Back when Minghao liked Jun, it should’ve been something that was only hers, something pure, but that wasn’t true— it’d always been tainted by fear, by what other people said, by a disgust for her own body.

She doesn’t want to tell Seungkwan that she has too much armor for her to ever really take off.

\---

In the summer before Minghao turns twenty, she gets an internship at an architecture firm.

It’s not paid, so she also works part-time at a local diner to keep up with rent. She knows that most of the people in there think low of her, but she doesn’t mind, just diligently takes notes and plays around with the software when everyone else is done with it and sketches designs at night.

She eats lunch with Vernon, the IT, and Jeonghan, who is loving and kind in a way that might border on condescending but never steps over it.

Vernon takes a bite of his sandwich and asks, “How’s your new roommate?”

Jeonghan had recently put up an advertisement, since, in Jeonghan’s words, “her landlord was a dick and upped the rents even if the place was essentially falling apart.” Recently, she just got one.

The thing about Jeonghan’s stories is that she never refers to the people in her life by their given names; it gives her stories a distant quality, a sense that they take place in Narnia rather than in Minghao’s plane of existence.

“Ooh, yeah, she just moved in,” Jeonghan says. “I’m like, ninety percent sure she’s not a psychopath.”

Minghao snickers. “Of course you’re not certain of the other ten percent.”

“You don’t _understand_ , I _can’t be_ . I think she’s basically married to her piano. Dude, she just— she like brought in this huge-ass piano and straight-up told me we could get rid of her mattress but not the instrument. She’s _insane_.”

“She playing for the local orchestra or something?” Vernon asks.

“Mm, I don’t think so, she’s just really into music. It doesn’t bother me, at least. She always mutes it whenever I sleep.”

“So considerate,” Vernon says, voice only a little bit dry.

“Sounds like someone I used to know,” Minghao mumbles.

Jeonghan gives them little updates on her roommate from time to time over the course of the month. From what Minghao gathers, Jeonghan’s roommate is, as predicted, not a psycho, just a little confused about life the way they all are.

“Okay, so,” Jeonghan says, one day. “Do you mind if I ask you guys for advice?”

Vernon types away. “I’m listening, just trying to fix this virus. Go on.”

Minghao rests her chin on her hand. “Same here. Except without the virus part.”

“Okay, so, um, yesterday.” Jeonghan sounds like she’s having trouble saying the words, even though she’s one of the most verbally shameless people Minghao knows. “My roommate walked in on me and my girlfriend, and we weren’t doing anything except making out, except the roommate straight up, like—”

“—Oh, dear god—”

“To her credit, she didn’t scream or anything, but she uh— she kind of turned very red and then refused to look at me for most of the day. And um, I thought she was homophobic, which would’ve been very unfortunate, because, you know, we live together—”

“That would be rather difficult, yes,” Vernon says, continuing to examine the laptop. Vernon himself is straight but doesn’t flinch whenever homosexuality is brought up— Minghao likes that a lot about him.

“But um. So it _actually_ turns out, she’s very confused, and thinks she might be bisexual, but she’s not sure. I just… I need unbiased help.”

Vernon winces. “Oof.”

Damn. Minghao takes a bite of her noodles, which are cold, because the lower-level microwaves do not do shit.

“So,” Jeonghan says, and her voice is pleading, “What do I tell her?”

Minghao bites her lip. “I don’t think you need to tell her much of anything. Just like, let her know you’re there for her, and you’re not judging her or anything, and that she’ll figure it out and it’s fine whatever the outcome is.”

Jeonghan groans. “ _You_ should be in charge of this, not me.”

“You’re good with people,” Minghao says, blunt. “Just don’t overthink it.”

“ _Yes_!” Vernon yells, and they both look at him. He flushes. “Um, nothing, I just, got the virus fixed. It was one of those chain-email things? Yeah.”

“God, I hate those.” Minghao grimaces. “Did it get sent anywhere else in the office?”

But really, the way things were, Minghao should’ve figured it out sooner. But it’s well on its way into July when the bomb is dropped and Minghao finally pieces everything together.

“Why do you look so excited?” Jeonghan asks Minghao when she comes to lunch one day, vending machine water in hand.

“Oh, the nearby cinema’s doing a one-day special showing for Kimi No Na Wa,” Minghao says, opening the water bottle. She doesn’t actually look that excited, but Jeonghan’s good at discerning people’s emotions. “My roommate got me two tickets. Anyone wanna come see it with me?”

Vernon grins. “Dude, I’d love to,” he says. “When is it?”

“Next Saturday at two.”

The smile slides off his face. “Sorry, Minghao. I’m pretty sure I have a family thing then.”

Minghao shrugs. “It’s alright.”

“You should give it to my roommate,” Jeonghan suggests. “I think she likes that kind of thing.”

“The infamous roommate,” Minghao says dryly. “And what makes you say that?”

“Uh, I never said this, but like one time she was playing this song on the piano from the movie— Sparkle— I think? And then she was like, talking about this girl she was friends with in the past, and that she was—”

“Wait,” Minghao says slowly, “ _What_.”

The puzzle pieces slowly click together, and Minghao hopes, for maybe the first time in her life, that she is wrong. Or that she isn’t wrong. She doesn’t know know what she wants.

Jeonghan looks at her, understandably confused.

“Would your roommate’s name,” Minghao continues, “happen to be _Jun_.”

“Yes— wait, how do you know that?”

“What’s happening?” Vernon asks, noticing the tense air.

“I’m the girl she used to be friends with,” Minghao says weakly, and his eyebrows nearly fly off his face. “What kind of sitcom—”

“Oh my god,” Jeonghan cuts in, understanding dawning on her face. “You’re _Hao_.”

Twenty minutes later, Minghao presses a ticket into Jeonghan’s hand and tells her to give it to Jun as an anonymous gift from a coworker.

Does she love Jun romantically? No, Minghao got over her a long time ago. Does she love Jun platonically, still? Absolutely.  

But they also haven’t talked in years, and they haven’t left off on the best foot, and Minghao doesn’t know how meeting each other would go. Anyway, it’s Kimi No Na Wa. She’s not going to ruin that over a strained relationship.

They don’t see each other in the cinema— it’s packed full. Minghao isn’t disappointed, nor is she relieved. She goes home and sketches out skylines and floor plans, focuses on getting her unpaid internship upgraded to a paid one. She gives Jisoo the pack of sour gummy worms she smuggled out of the theater. She doesn’t think about Jun, what she looks like now, the way she talks, if she still uses strawberry shampoo.

She doesn’t think about Jun.

\---

On another note, she does get the internship upgrade before summer ends, and Jisoo drags her out to a nice coffee shop to celebrate.

“But the budget spreadsheet,” Minghao protests, under Jisoo’s firm stare. “And instant coffee is fine—”

“I’m pretty sure the instant coffee isn’t even real. Please calm down.”

Minghao still gets the cheapest thing on the menu, which Jisoo counteracts by ordering a small overpriced cake from the display. Minghao complains until she actually takes a bite and discovers the edible version of nirvana.

“I feel bad now, you try some,” Minghao says, laughing. Jisoo shakes her head, says, _no, it’s yours_ , and Minghao shoves her plastic fork over to Jisoo’s mouth, “C’mon, please—”

“Um,” a very, _very_ familiar voice says, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but—”

Minghao very quickly takes the fork back, and Jisoo wipes frosting off her mouth. In front of Minghao is a woman, hair chopped short to her shoulders, wearing light blue jeans and a white shirt. Her expression is searching.

“Jun?”

Minghao’s voice is barely a whisper.

“Minghao?”

Jesus Christ. Okay.

Jun looks different than she did in high school, and not just in looks. The way she holds herself is straighter, a little more confident, and she wears no makeup except for a soft smear of gloss across her mouth.

Minghao feels a storm of confusion kick up in her. She wonders how she should react.

But then the storm calms in the space of a second, and underneath all the dust and rain is an overwhelming gladness to see her friend again.

What was she so worried about?

“I haven’t seen you in ages,” Minghao says, and her smile is genuine. “How’ve you been?”

“Um,” Jun says, holding onto the strap of her bag like a lifeline. “I’ve been okay.”

“You two know each other?” Jisoo asks, gesturing her coffee stirrer at the two of them. Minghao nods. “Oh, I’ll leave then,” she says sweetly. “See you later, Minghao. Nice to meet you, Jun.” She packs up her stuff and walks out the door.

“Can I,” Jun says, pointing at the seat across, now vacant.

“Yeah, of course,” Minghao says. And then, on second thought, slides the square of cake over to Jun. “My roommate bought this for me as celebration for getting my unpaid internship to a paid one. Eat some, it’s really good.”

“It’s your cake, so no,” Jun laughs. “But congratulations, oh my god. That’s fantastic.”

Minghao nods, and just looks at Jun for a second. Jun didn’t even know she _had_ an internship. And Minghao doesn’t know anything about Jun— except she does, doesn’t she? Because Jeonghan had talked about her, sort of. The roommate. So she knows Jun still plays the piano, and that she’d gone to the Kimi No Na Wa showing, and that she might be bisexual.

Dear god, Jun’s bisexual. Her brain spazzes a little at the last one but quickly recollects itself.

“We switched hair,” Jun murmurs.

It takes a moment for Minghao to get what Jun is saying, but then she understands. Back then, it was always Jun whose hair was long, Minghao who kept hers short. Now Jun’s goes down to only her chin, a thin braid brushing her cheek, while Minghao’s hits the small of her back, held in place by bobby pins.

“Yeah,” Minghao says. “It looks… good on you.”

“Ditto.”

It’s awkward, but not necessarily in a bad way.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” Jun says. “I kind of short-circuited, not gonna lie. It was like seeing a ghost.”

“Dude, same. And yeah, I don’t come here often. I drink instant coffee most of the time.”

Jun scoffs. “You’ve always had more discipline than me. This place is hard on my wallet, but I always come about once a week. It’s an addiction.”

Minghao nods. “I’m glad I ran into you, though.” It’s the truth. “We should meet up again? Yeah?”

Jun nods. “I’d like that, yeah.” Then she laughs, embarrassed, hiding her face in her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m so fucking bad at this.” Minghao wants to pat her on the back but has no idea if Jun would be okay with that.

“We haven’t seen each other in a long time,” Minghao says. “It’s normal.”

\---

They don’t meet up at that coffee shop the second time.

Instead they go to a little hole in the wall shop called Fry I; it serves good ramen, not Americanized at all. Minghao wonders, fleetingly, if Jun still dislikes white rice as much as she did in the past.

“How’d you find this place?” Jun asks.

“Seungkwan took me.” She wonders if Jun would be interested in knowing that Minghao and Seungkwan had a failed— very failed— one night stand. Probably not. That isn’t relevant information.

“I have no idea who that is,” Jun says, “but no matter. What should I order?”

Minghao gets a bowl with rice noodles swimming around in a pool of broth, several shavings of green onion and two wontons tucked off to the side. Jun, not knowing the menu as well as Minghao, orders the same.  

Jun twirls noodles around her chopsticks; both her family and Minghao’s had made them eat their dinners traditionally. Her nails are short, square, unpainted. Jun has never painted her nails. She says it messes with the way she plays the piano.

“What do you major in?” Minghao asks. “Last time we talked I think you wanted to be a teacher.”

“Um, yeah, that went out the window; can you imagine me with kids? I’m majoring in psych. And you’re— you’re in architecture, right? That fits you.”

Psychology, that makes sense with Jun. “Yeah.”

“Tell me about your internship thing.”

“There’s not much to tell?” Minghao says. “I kind of just sit in a cubicle and then go to meetings to take notes and stuff. The thing is, nobody really looks at you when you’re like, one, an intern, and two, female. This guy asked me to make him coffee one time.”

Jun’s expression contorts into half a grin, half a grimace. “I’m presuming you didn’t follow.”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t,” Minghao says. “That’s— no. But not everyone there sucks. I eat lunch with the IT guy, his name’s Vernon, and then there’s Jeonghan.”

Jun’s eyes widen. “Wait, Jeonghan? That’s what my roommate’s— shit, no, it’s got to be the _same_ Jeonghan, if it’s an architecture firm.” Minghao nods. “How’d I not know this?”

“Because Jeonghan doesn’t use names when she talks about people. Have you noticed that?”

Jun chews her lip, thinking. She stirs her noodles, green onion catching between the threads. Minghao wonders what her own name in Jeonghan-speak is. That weird intern who always looks like she’s semi put together, maybe. Or, her psychotic coworker who had a mental breakdown when the copy machine broke.

“Has she like… talked about me?” Jun asks, hesitant.

“Sometimes. She talked about how you were willing to sleep in a sleeping bag as long as you could keep your piano. That sort of stuff.”

“I see. Anything else?” And Minghao debates whether to mention the bisexuality thing. Because she’s sure she isn’t supposed to know about that. Jeonghan obviously had no idea that Minghao _knew_ Jun when she’d asked for advice.

But then again— Minghao’s and Jun’s relationship is already weird enough, no need to strain it with more secrets.

Minghao opens her mouth, says, “And she said that you like… might be bi.”

“Buying what— oh. Um. _That_. Yeah.” She doesn’t look offended, at least, just a little uncomfortable. “Yeah.”

“Well,” Minghao says awkwardly, “I’m obviously not going to judge on that aspect.”

“Is this when you figured out it was me that was Jeonghan’s roommate?” Jun asks, with a half-laugh. “Because I’m the only person on this planet who’d have their sexuality crisis this late?”

“ _No_ ,” Minghao sputters. She’s not used to this: Jun’s overall boosted confidence, but this weird self-deprecation that’s also present. “No, no. It was actually the whole Kimi No Na Wa thing that made me figure it out.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Jun says, voice filled with understanding. “ _You_ were the coworker that gifted me the ticket. God, so many things make sense now.”

“Yeah. Did you go? I was there in the cinema, but I didn’t see you.”

“It was crowded, definitely. But yes… I was there.”

Their small talk is already a flimsy thing, a shallow pool of water with an ocean underneath; now, the cover’s been ripped away. Besides, it isn’t like Minghao and Jun are meant for small talk, when there are so many things underneath the surface, anyway. They aren’t childhood best friends anymore, and they aren’t strangers— they’re something in the middle. Something that makes Minghao feel slightly lonely.

“That’s when I figured it out…” Minghao says. “I didn’t know how meeting you would go, though, which was why I put it off.”

Jun twists a strand of hair around her finger. “Yeah. I— understand.”

Minghao puts more noodles in her mouth. Her bowl is half empty, Jun’s already done. Jun always ate faster than her.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Jun says. “For all the shit I said to you back then. Like, I don’t know. It wasn’t fair to you. I’ve kind of missed you a lot.”

Minghao stares at a stray circlet of green onion, floating around the top of the broth. “I don’t blame you. It’s not like you knew, right? And anyway, you were always the nicest to me.”

Maybe _nice_ isn’t the right word. Jun understood her better than anyone else back then. There was always that invisible string that yanked the two of them toward each other again and again, whether they liked it or not.

“I don’t know,” Jun murmurs.

“Hey,” Minghao says, her voice sharp. “Let’s be friends again, alright? I promise I’m one-hundred percent over you now, and I don’t give a crap about what happened three years back. So?”

Jun looks up, and Minghao can’t decipher her expression. “Of course,” she says. “Sounds good.”

\---

They do become friends again.

University is an impediment, but they send texts back and forth, and Jun shows up at her campus about once every two weekends.

It’s Minghao’s birthday, and she isn’t expecting much of anything; she wakes up to a text from Seungkwan: fifty different emojis followed by a notice that she’s left twenty dollars in her mailbox. Minghao doesn’t even remember telling Seungkwan it was her birthday. Maybe it came out when she was drunk? Seriously, _Jisoo_ doesn’t even know.

She does expect the call from Seokmin, though, who’s overseas. “Hao,” he says, and his smile carries over the line. “You’re part of the twenties squad now!”

Minghao’s always been the youngest in her grade. “Yes, you’re old, I get it.”

“No, now you’re old too,” Seokmin says, and Minghao sighs.

She talks to him until she’s forced to put down the phone so she can head to class. It’s mostly anecdotes rather than actual conversation— they have to clear out the backlog every time they talk, since their proximity has been dashed. Seokmin talks about how this summer, he’ll have saved up enough to buy a ticket back.  

“I’ll chip in twenty dollars,” Minghao says, even though she’d pay for half if Seokmin really needed it. “My friend gave it to me as a birthday gift. I don’t even know how she found out it was my birthday.”

“Maybe because you told her?” Seokmin suggests sagely.

“I mean, that’s probably it,” Minghao says. “You should meet Seungkwan, though. I feel like you two would get along. That, or you’d kill each other.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Seokmin says. “New friends are always great.”

“Speaking of new friends, you’ll _love_ this— I ran into Jun.”

“Jun?” Seokmin asks, disbelieving. “The one you used to like? Wen Junya?”  

“No, the _other_ Jun that I used to like,” Minghao says, exasperated. “Yes, Wen Jun. Don’t call her Junya, it’s weird.”  

All in all, it’s a fairly normal day, except for the longer-than-usual call with Seokmin. So Minghao isn’t expecting Jun to be in her apartment when she gets back from class, talking to Jisoo on the couch. Jisoo’s got a soft smile on her face, and Jun seems comfortable, despite the fact she’s sometimes shy around strangers. A phantom hand reaches out to tug at Minghao’s heartstrings.

“Minghao,” Jisoo says, and Minghao gets an acute sense of foreboding. “Jun here was just telling me that it was your birthday.”

“Oh, was she,” Minghao says, weak. “That’s really interesting.”

“We were roommates for _more than a year_.” Jisoo sounds extraordinarily affronted, and Jun snickers. “How do I not know this information? Why aren’t you on my birthday calendar?”

“ _Exactly_ because you have a birthday calendar. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. It’s just the day I was born.”

Jun tells Jisoo, “Don’t worry about it. She hates when people show her affection.”

“I made reservations to get a haircut this afternoon,” Jisoo says, distressed and annoyed. “But I can cancel them—”

“No,” Minghao says, “don’t _cancel it_.”

Jisoo rarely ever does anything for herself. She’s the sort of person who cares about other people more than anything else, which sometimes means she spreads herself out too thin. It’s why she’s perfectly happy being single— _I have yet to meet someone who is okay with me not spending enough time with them_ , she laughs, when asked. _And that is fine._

Jisoo looks at Minghao, and then Jun. “Yeah, okay.”

Minghao feels her entire body blush. She knows what Jisoo’s made her assumptions about, and they’re completely incorrect.

When Jisoo leaves, the door clicking shut behind her, Minghao looks up. “You didn’t have to come,” she says quietly. It’s Thursday, and Jun has class.

“No, I didn’t,” Jun agrees, amiable. “Now shut up.”

Minghao, left to her own devices, would have studied, but she has to admit that this is a better alternative. They watch two episodes of a volleyball anime _,_ eat the pack of cookies in the pantry, and call Minghao’s parents, who know nothing of what transpired, and are just delighted to see Jun again.

Back when Minghao was younger, her birthday parties were always small, but she didn’t care who else was there, as long as Jun was. This feeling, after all this time— it still applies, and Minghao isn’t sure what that means. Or if she should do anything about it. Or if it means anything at all.

\---

But despite everything, there’s still a wariness.

Much of it is from Jun. Sometimes she’ll have an expression on her face that Minghao knows she’s looking at old memories, a little too unwilling to completely forgive herself. But Minghao also knows that it’s partly from her, too. The unfortunate fact is that Jun hurt her a lot back then. Not just Jun; people left a lot of small marks on her. But Jun’s scar is the deepest one.

“Hey, Minghao,” Jun says, voice tinny over the phone. “So… I got commissioned to play the piano for a wedding. And it’s like, a really big wedding.”

“That’s awesome,” Minghao says. But Jun sounds off. “You nervous or something?”

“No, I’m not, people never know when you make a mistake as long as you keep playing. Uh, it’s just, they gave me a plus one—and I know you like wedding food…”

She sounds so hesitant; Minghao dislikes it. She’s also surprised that Jun doesn’t have a significant other or anything. They’ve never really talked about their love lives— it’s not necessarily a topic that wants to be broached— but Minghao had just assumed.

“I’ll bring a large gaudy purse to sneak cake back in,” Minghao says, and tries to fight down an unexpected flare of annoyance.

It’s not like plus ones _had_ to be romantic— did Jun think she still held any power over Minghao, if Jun was making such a big deal over it? The thought irritated Minghao to no end, although she wasn’t quite sure why. It’d been three fucking years, she wasn’t a kid anymore; Jun didn’t have to walk on goddamn eggshells.

“Alright, then,” Jun says, and her voice is so sweet Minghao regrets every thought.  “I’ll stick you and your large gaudy purse onto the RSVP.”

The pockets on girl pants might suck, but at least purses are good for robbery. The flare of irritation dies out as quick as it comes.

Minghao borrows one of Jisoo’s dresses for the occasion. It doesn’t really fit her, but no mind. She looks presentable, and that’s what matters. It isn’t like this is for a grade. When she shows up, she regrets her decision a little bit, solely because the place is so classy. Whatever. Too late now.

Jun finds her and taps her on the arm. “Hey.”

“Oh, you look nice,” Minghao says automatically, because it’s true, a blue bodycon dress wrapping around Jun’s frame, mouth shining with a pearly gloss.

“Thank you, I was told to dress like one of the background decorations,” Jun says, offering a dry smile. “This place is so big, dude. I have no idea where I’m supposed to be.”

“Can’t help you there.”

“Watch as I, like, finally find the right place in the middle of their vows or something,” Jun grimaces. “Oh, I think that’s one of the violinists! I’ll just tail him. See you, Hao. Glad you came.”

She squeezes Minghao’s arm and sets off. Minghao finds the chapel and takes a seat at one of the back wooden benches, waiting for the wedding to start.

Jun’s deft fingers play _Ave Maria_ and _Wedding Day at Troldhaugen_ and _Canon in D_ , perfectly in sync with the mini-orchestra. She once said she looked the best while playing the piano, and Minghao can definitely see the appeal. It’s to the point where Minghao misses the wedding kiss because she’s too busy focusing on the background music.

Later, there’s a reception— a prequel to the official after-party, but that’s for a hundred or so _close friends_ — and Minghao eats chunks of fruit drizzled with chocolate from the nearby chocolate fountain while looking at the expensive art on the walls. This wedding, she swears.

“Oh my god,” Jun says, slipping near her side. “I’ve been released for the time being.”

“Nice job up there,” Minghao tells her. “I mean, not that I could see you or anything—”

Jun scoffs. “Yeah, of course you couldn’t.” A pause. “I’m just ensemble.”

“Good ensemble, though.”

“Debatable,” Jun says evasively; she’s never satisfied with her playing. “Hao, did you see the chocolate fountain?”

Minghao points at her plate. “That’s where this came from.”

“Ooh, let me try,” she says, pointing to her mouth.  

Minghao obliges, holding up a raspberry. Jun takes a bite, and Minghao gets a severe flashback to freshman year of high school. The circumstances are remarkably similar, one a recital, the other a wedding; Jun’s mouth brushes her fingers again, and she still uses the same brand of lip gloss. The only difference might be that this time, it feels a little intentional.

No matter. Minghao is suddenly hyper aware of Jun, stunning in a dress that hugs her curves, demure if not for the slit up her thigh, the triangle of cleavage. Minghao finds her thoughts going down a direction definitely not suitable for a wedding reception— maybe for a hotel afterward— and fishes them out from the gutter, praying that she won’t blush. Where did that come from?

 _Say something_. “Is it worth the hype or nah?”

Jun chews, then grins and shoots her a thumbs up. “Yeah, you know it.”

A girl passes them, and Minghao can’t look at Jun anymore. She doesn’t know who the girl is, just that she’s not Jun, and taps her on the arm. “I like your dress.”

The girl beams at her. “Thanks.”

“Gotta go,” Jun says, curt and sudden, and Minghao looks at her, surprised. “I think the bride wants me for an encore. I’ll see you later.”

\---

Minghao is pissed off. The appropriate response to realizing she may have developed a crush is probably not the one she had, which was a cross of _dear god,_ not _again_ and _I want to fling myself out the window_.

“Fuck you and your blue dress, Jun,” she murmurs.

Call Minghao emotionally constipated, but it isn’t fair. Her thoughts stretch and pull like taffy, wind around themselves in knots. Minghao’s mad Jun for doing something like that, and she’s mad at herself for making it a big deal. She was the one who wanted Jun to stop holding back. Maybe Jun’s just incapable of eating a raspberry like a normal human being— who knows?

Somehow, her mind ends up drifting to a few weeks ago, to a conversation she had with Seungkwan. Some girl made a side comment about Seungkwan’s outfit, and Minghao got extraordinarily pissed off.

Seungkwan just shrugged.

“Ignore her, she’s not worth it. What were you saying about the ideal chocolate chip cookie?”

Minghao had been expounding on the science behind baking, from some book she’d read, but her thoughts were no longer on that topic, courtesy of the girl. “... You’re not bothered? At all?”

“I mean, it would be, like, _preferable_ if she hadn’t said it, but I’m also too lazy to care.”

Minghao opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. She didn’t know how to respond. For some reason, Seungkwan’s words unsettled her, even though they shouldn’t—

“Listen, you aren’t pretty because someone says so,” Seungkwan said. “You’re pretty because you are.”

“Okay,” Minghao said slowly.

“No, seriously. If I listened to what people said about me, I wouldn’t be wearing a crop top right now, okay? But I _am_ wearing a crop top. And I look fucking awesome in it.”

She did.

And Minghao is sure she might’ve looked like an ass for the long time it took for her to come up with a reply, but Seungkwan’s good at not judging people.

Back in the present, Minghao feels a surge of embarrassment. On many aspects, she isn’t insecure: she’s certain that she can achieve many things if she puts her mind to it, knows her diligence and creativity will take her far. She’s a big believer in following dreams, in going as hard as possible toward the finish line— granted, it makes her prone to overstress, but Jisoo usually keeps that in check.

But in the rare instances someone calls her beautiful, she’ll always brush it off.

Back in high school, she never felt like she deserved Jun’s reciprocation. (Which, it turned out that it wasn’t something she needed to worry about, but whatever.) Minghao thought Jun was, while not perfect, ethereal, untouchable. Of course everyone liked her. What chance did Minghao have, with her knot of awkward limbs, and plain face?

It’s partially why she was able to conceal it for a good five years, content with tucking shreds of Jun’s affections into her pockets. But all Minghao is certain of now is that she doesn’t want to go through something like that again.

 _I’ll tell her this weekend_ , she thinks. She can worry about the consequences of such a decision later. _And this time, we will be on even ground_.

\---

On Saturday, Minghao goes over to Jun and Jeonghan’s shared apartment. Jun answers the door, clearly not expecting visitors: she’s wearing an old black t-shirt from high school that says _NYEAC ATTACK,_ and her hair is a haloed mess around her head.

“Is Jeonghan home?” Minghao asks.

_Please say she is. I’m regretting my life choices. I can’t do this._

“No, she’s getting groceries,” Jun says. The universe laughs at Minghao’s discomfort. “Did you need something from her?”

“No. I just— figured I’d come over for a change, instead of the other way around.”

Jun buys this. “Oh, well, I don’t _mind_ the transit,” she says. “But thanks. Since you’re here, can I try to play your shirt? It’s fucking awesome.”

Out of context, it sounds weird, but Minghao’s wearing a shirt with a sheet music design, ledger lines running around her torso.

(She doesn’t put makeup on for the occasion— Jun would _definitely_ know something was up then, and anyway, she’d probably accidentally stab her eye out with a mascara stick and walk into this half blind— but she figures the shirt wouldn’t hurt.)

Jun tugs her over to the piano, and Minghao lets her, amused. The piano bench is a tight fit for two people, so their thighs are pressed against each other, and Jun taps out the tuneless melody and Minghao tries not to think about the fact Jun is basically staring at her chest. Even if, again, it’s for a completely innocent reason.

Jun’s fingers slip under the hem, and Minghao jerks away.

There isn’t room on the seat so she has to stand up. It’s awkward, Jun’s face like a deer caught in the headlights and Minghao’s own expression probably not much better.

“I’m sorry,” Jun says. “Just— couldn’t see the notes.”

“Okay.”

“That was really weird of me, I know that.”

“It kind of was, but whatever.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jun echoes, but her voice and eyes are both faraway. Minghao’s about to ask what she’s thinking about when Jun reaches up, tangles her fingers in the fabric, and pulls Minghao down.

It’s an uncomfortable position. The piano bench is tiny, and the height difference due to their current postures is annoying, and their only point of contact besides Jun’s hand on her shirt is their mouths. Minghao pushes her away after only a second.

“You’re falling off the bench,” she says. Her voice comes out eerily calm.

“This is what you’re concerned about,” Jun says, also like nothing of importance had just occurred. “You’re such a pragmatist.”

“One of us has to be practical around here—”

“Shut up, just, shut up,” Jun says; her voice goes from serene to urgent. She stands up and tugs Minghao over to a patch of wall, blank save for a couple of post-it notes written with Jeonghan’s passive-aggressive handwriting. “Okay, this better?”

Minghao should say a lot of things. Like, _we should talk about this_ . Or, _we should really talk about this_ . But Jun is right there, her black shirt slipping off her shoulders and jeans riding low on her waist, bare-faced save for some Chapstick, and Minghao thinks, _if I’m wrong, just let me have this for a moment_.

“Yeah,” Minghao says, and can barely get the word out before Jun is kissing her again.

Her Chapstick is flavored vanilla. That’s what Minghao realizes about three seconds in. Her mouth tastes like artificial vanilla and is very, very soft. Minghao thinks she might not be breathing, but oxygen is something she can deal with later.

This is not a position Minghao had ever thought she’d be in, but she is, Jun pulling her close so that their bodies are lined up together, her left hand intertwined with Minghao’s, her right playing with her hair. There’s a line at their waists where their shirts have ridden up, and Minghao can feel the heat radiating off Jun’s bare skin. Jun is three inches shorter than her, something that Minghao always privately liked, but now she can feel how it changes the way the contours of their bodies fit against each other.

She doesn’t really know what she’s doing at this point. Embarrassing herself, probably. She likes this too much to care.

Minghao pulls away first, yanking down the hem of her shirt and turning away. Her face burns. Jun takes a hasty step back, putting a good two feet between them.

“Um,” Jun says, at a loss for words.

Minghao coughs. “So… that happened.”

“That it did.”

Her thoughts scramble to recollect themselves, her brain having taken a hiatus for the past five minutes.“Why’d you do it?” Minghao asks softly. “That wasn’t exactly the most platonic thing.”

“No kidding.” Jun audibly swallows, pauses. Minghao waits. “You… look very good. I mean, you always do. I’ve kind of wanted to do something like that for the past two months or so. But you— I gave up today.”

It’s hard to concentrate on the actual content of Jun’s words when it feels like all of her brain cells have abandoned their posts to either get drunk and/or memorize the exact way Jun looks right now, with her eyes downcast but determined and her arms folded over her torso, like she wants to protect herself from possible rejection, but Minghao tries to get it together.

Two months ago. “Isn’t that around when we ran into each other again? In the coffee shop?”

“Exactly when I ran into you, actually,” Jun admits. “You were so different. Or maybe I just wasn’t wearing blinders anymore. Something like that.”

“That’s… very cheesy.”

“I was in the middle of a sexuality crisis, and you were trying to feed cake to a pretty girl, I’m allowed to be cheesy,” Jun protests, and Minghao stifles her laugh with her forearm.

She feels kind of a vindictive pleasure, that Jun may have suffered a little bit. She figures it’s well deserved; Jun ruined her for anyone else, at least for the time being. Absentmindedly, Minghao tips her head back against the wall, and Jun presses her face to her collarbone.

It takes every bit of willpower for Minghao’s expression to remain stoic.

“I cracked so easily,” Jun mumbles against her skin. “Two months.”

“Versus my five years, give or take,” Minghao says. She feels Jun whine rather than hears it, and the sensation makes her involuntarily shiver. “I mean, I realized I had a thing for you again after the wedding, which was last week, so I guess that was pretty fast this time around too. I came here to say some stuff today, actually.”

“Ah. Is that why you, uh…”

“Apparently my wardrobe is three steps ahead of my mouth.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, I like your mouth too.”

Minghao thinks she may have left this plane of existence. “I will actually kill you,” she mumbles, and Jun laughs. “I don’t know. So— what now?”

“Would you be willing to date me?” Jun asks; she lifts her head up and looks at Minghao in such a way that Minghao wants to call sabotage. “Give me a shot at the whole romance thing. I know I haven’t been so good at that with you in the past.”

“Your free trial lasts thirty days.”

Jun punches her on the arm and asks her if she’s Youtube Red, and with that they resume their normal dynamic, except Jun says things to see if she can get Minghao to turn red and Minghao lets their hands brush together while internally attempting not to spontaneously combust.

They could turn out to be a real mess, who knows. Minghao is perfectly aware that relationships don’t go well sometimes, and she knows that she and Jun aren’t an exception. But Minghao also knows how to stand on her own, and Seungkwan’s got a good brand of ice cream for break-ups, and Jun is just. She’s Jun. She’s special. If Minghao’s getting a chance with this, then hell if she isn’t going to try.

\---

“I think my roommate’s sexuality crisis is over,” Jeonghan says. “She was making out with a girl yesterday. I don’t know who it was. I closed the door fast.”

“The year is 2054,” Vernon says, in a tone generally reserved for movie voiceovers, “I am the last heterosexual person on the planet. We are a dying species.”

“It’s okay, you can date bi girls,” Jeonghan says, making no move to contradict him. “But _dude_ , my roommate’s got game.”

Minghao had been looking over at a concrete mold plan when Jeonghan’s words register, and her water goes down the wrong pipe. Jeonghan looks like she’s concerned, like she’s ready to send Minghao to the hospital if she doesn’t stop coughing in the next seventeen seconds.

“Minghao, are you okay?” Vernon asks. “You good? Not dying?”

“There was no—” Minghao struggles to phrase her words. “Dammit.”

Jeonghan comically gasps, looking at Minghao in a mixture of horror and bemusement. “Shit, that was _you_? I thought the hair was familiar, even if was, you know, more messed up than usual—”

“Oh my god,” Vernon says, and throws down his pen. Minghao wants to move to Mars. “Congrats, Minghao, I’m very happy for you. Now let me be single and bitter and figure out this virus in _peace_.”

Minghao can’t make eye contact with Jeonghan for the rest of the day, but it’s fine. She’s kind of grateful for the verification it wasn’t all just a dream.

\---

Time continues.

Minghao graduates; her diploma isn’t celebrated with as much fervor as some of her peers, but Seungkwan’s in the audience, along with Jun, the two of them diligently on video call with Minghao’s parents, who are halfway across the country.

Vernon and Jeonghan also come, too, as a surprise— well, Jeonghan is there because her other friend is graduating, and Vernon had nothing better to do for the afternoon. He meets Seungkwan and turns red, which Seungkwan pretends not to notice until the end of the evening, when she asks him out on a date and hands him her phone number.

Jisoo gets a job two cities over. She and Minghao promise to stay in contact, and Jisoo tells Minghao to call if she needs anything. She leaves gracefully, the way she does most things, taking three days to fold her belongings into cardboard boxes, sans her guitar, which she keeps slung over her shoulder.

“I’ll miss you,” she says, and leaves behind a jar of paper stars to remember her by.

Right now, Jisoo’s doing just fine. When the two of them Skype, her pixelated face is all soft smiles and kind words. She doesn’t have a roommate, or a significant other, but no one would call her lonely. Jisoo’s heart is a big thing, a universe all on its own, and a deserving recipient, if one exists, has not yet been found.

Looking at her, no one could call that a bad thing.

Jun moves in with Minghao. It’s only logical— the rent is too high, the place too big for any one person. Minghao has her reservations, since it’s such a— well, _large_ step to take— and at times she’s still afraid they aren’t really going to work out. But she has to admit the arrangement is nice.

“This is disgustingly domestic,” is what she says aloud.

Jun grins. “Is coexisting with me such a pain in the ass?”

 _I preferred Jisoo_ , is what springs to the tip of her tongue, but she bites it down— it isn’t true, and she’s trying not to make so many jokes. “Nah.” She nudges Jun with her knee. “We’re out of instant ramen, by the way.”

“That sounds like a tomorrow problem,” Jun says. “Wait— how’d we run out so fast? Are you staying up late again?”

“Our branch had a sketch-a-thon last week—”

Jun’s face shifts disapprovingly. “You’re such crap at taking care of yourself.”

“I can’t leave Jeonghan on her own,” Minghao protests.

“Yeah, and as her past roommate, I assure you that Jeonghan knows how to sleep more than you do.”

Two months ago, during finals, Minghao got really pissed off at Jun for shutting off all of her alarms. It wasn’t uncalled for, since Minghao seemed about to pass out. But it made Minghao realize how much she’d depended on Jisoo’s natural assertiveness to keep her from overworking herself. Jun was more someone who watched silently.

“I know,” Minghao says. “I promise to actually get eight hours tonight.”

Jun’s mouth quirks up. “I’m not your mom. But thank you.”

“It would be really fucking weird if you were my mom,” Minghao says. She lightly tugs at Jun’s arm. “... C’mere.”

She’s fortunately not _as_ awkward at asking for what she wants now. Back when they were just friends, she didn’t really have to verbalize too much, since they’d known each other for so long. But after the shift, she has to talk now, instead of just deflecting.

Fighting comes with that territory; Minghao sets her mouth into a line of stone and spits out harsh words; Jun crosses her arms and refuses to let anyone see her cry. It’s unexpected, because Minghao’s not _used_ to that, but it’s also somewhat necessary.

It isn’t the only thing that changes, though.

Minghao’s always been uncomfortable with overt displays of affection— the words _I love you_ don’t come easy to her, and she doesn’t often give or receive hugs— but it’s hard to be embarrassed when it’s Jun, who sets her at ease with just a glance. There’s a lot of parts of herself that she doesn’t like but Jun loves, and Minghao slowly tries to like them as well. It’s a long way to go, but she’s getting there.

Minghao always had her eyes to the sky, and she’d made her provisions to get their alone. And she could get there by herself. But Jun is there, wearing a compass around her neck, as is Seungkwan, always ready with a joke and bright words, and Jeonghan and Vernon, offering her a hand when her wings get tired. She doesn’t really believe they’re real, sometimes, but she’s grateful.

“Minghao,” Jun mumbles against her skin, tapping out a song on her back. “What are you thinking about? You’re like a million miles away.”

Jun is growing her hair out again; Minghao idly plays with the ends, splayed out against the mattress.

“No, that isn’t true,” Minghao says. “I’m right here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic made me realize i have a lot to improve on, but it was also something that i needed to write. thank you to everyone who made it down here; im extremely grateful. 
> 
> a quick heads up that you're beautiful
> 
> no, really. excuse me for my cheese, but whoever you are out there, im really happy that we're both carats. i get to stan beautiful talented people with beautiful talented people— that's pretty damn cool. have a nice day out there!! i love you!!


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